We should declare war on stuff. In fact, I think maybe I’ll formally do so one of these days. I’ll post about how bad stuff is and how it should be eliminated. You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about: trinkets, doodads, gewgaws, things that seem important in the moment but which add nothing of value to life. Stuff costs money, but it has no worth. That’s what it’s called “stuff.” It doesn’t get a descriptive name. All stuff does is take up space and consume resources. It has some striking similarities with garbage.

There are many peddlers of stuff in the world, and there are many different kinds of stuff. Stuff is a name-brand food product that costs twice as much as the store brand but doesn’t taste any better. Stuff is a Mt. Rushmore keychain some guy at a streetside booth in Keystone, SD tries to hawk to you. Stuff is a brand new Bentley when a used Toyota would do. Stuff is name-brand prescription medicine when the generic brand is readily available.

Stuff is not strictly necessary, but many times, we convince ourselves that we deserve stuff. I already discussed this in my post Should you let yourself take a break from being cheap?:

The “I deserve” mentality can be pretty harmful. I deserve this new car, you think; I deserve to eat out at a fancy restaurant. Maybe, but all those “I deserve”s pile up pretty fast and it’s hard to save money when you live like that.

The fact is that nobody deserves stuff except the most boring, apathetic, unmotivated, sluglike individual imaginable. Stuff is worthless! How can anyone deserve something worthless? This is a contradiction in terms. You either deserve something good or you deserve something bad. You don’t deserve something that will have no lasting impact on your life or the life of any other person.

Nobody deserves stuff ’cause stuff is without value. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s something of unlimited worth that everybody deserves: freedom.

When you have freedom, you are fully human. You are the greatest version of yourself you can possibly be. Stuff falls away and crumbles to bits. All obstacles are obliterated. When you are free, you get what you deserve, because you deserve freedom.

I’m talking about something that’s bigger than money, but this is a blog about personal finance, so let’s stick to the topic at hand. One important step in the achievement of financial freedom is getting rid of stuff. If you set your standard of living high - if you think that you deserve stuff - you’ll spend all your income on it and you won’t have anything left over to buy freedom, which is what you’ll eventually achieve if you contribute consistently to safe, passive investments.

That’s why, as I’ve stated before, I’m all about lowering your standards as a means of achieving financial freedom. Whaddaya mean, you protest - the idea that you have to “lower your standards” is depressing! Well, I don’t think so. Lowering your standards simply means ridding yourself of the mistaken belief that you deserve stuff and realizing that freedom is what you really deserve. In other words, I’m talking about “living below your means.”

If you haven’t done so yet, figure out how much a $1000 IRA contribution you make today will be with in 30 years. Then find a way to eliminate $1000 of yearly spending on stuff, whatever stuff is in your life. I guarantee that living a less wasteful lifestyle will in itself be rewarding, and if that isn’t enough, there’s always the prospect of getting what you really deserve!

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